This is the fifth in a series of articles about some of the findings from the 2012 Big Broadcast Survey (BBS), a global study of broadcast industry trends, technology purchasing plans, and benchmarking of broadcast technology vendor brands. Nearly 10,000 broadcast professionals in 100+ countries took part in the 2012 BBS, making it the largest and most comprehensive market study ever conducted in the broadcast industry.

Each year, as part of the Big Broadcast Survey (BBS), we ask a global sample of broadcast professionals to rank a variety of technology vendor brands on a wide range of metrics. We use these responses to create a series of reports, which through benchmarking and industry “league tables,” provides a view as to how each vendor is positioned in the market relative to the industry as a whole, as well as against their direct competitors.

This is the second in a series of posts about how broadcast technology vendors were ranked and benchmarked on a variety of metrics by the respondents to the 2012 BBS.

While it’s positive for any vendor to achieve a good “overall opinion” ranking, this metric is somewhat one-sided because it relies solely on the positive opinions of respondents. In order to get a better understanding of how broadcast technology vendor brands are perceived, it is necessary to look at both the positive and negative opinions of brands, and to take into account how these opinions have changed over time.

This post looks at how the global sample of broadcast professionals who participated in the 2012 BBS ranked their netchange ofoverall opinion of the 152 broadcast technology vendors we covered in the study. You can find a chart with the complete list of vendor brands covered in the 2012 BBS here.

How These Results Were Calculated

We first asked 2012 BBS respondents to rank their overall opinion of relevant brands (see brand opinion rankings here) on a scale of 1 -10 with 10 being the best in the market and 1 being the worst in the market. We then asked respondents whether their opinion of these brands has changed over the last few years – specifically whether they feel their opinion of each brand has “improved,” “declined” or “stayed the same.”

This “change of opinion data” provides a more comprehensive view of how each brand is perceived by the market because it takes into account positive and negative perceptions.

No company is perfect, and the brands we measured in the 2012 BBS are no different. All brands in the 2012 BBS study had both positive (got better) and negative (got worse) connotations associated with it, and there were also are significant percentage of respondents who said their opinion of a brand had “stayed the same.”

In order to derive a more meaningful metric, we use the “change of opinion” data to calculate the Net Change in Overall Opinion for each brand by subtracting the percentage of respondents who said a brand “got worse” from the percentage of respondents who said their opinion of a brand had “got better,” while ignoring the “stayed the same” responses.

This metric shows the brands that are perceived as getting better, and which are in decline, on an overall basis.

The Net Change in Overall Opinion presents a more balanced view each brand because it takes into account both the positive and negative perceptions of brands, along with how these opinions have changed over time.

The Net Change in Overall Opinion findings from the 2012 BBS are shown below in two ways:

An overall industry “league table” that shows the 30 highest ranked vendors for the metric “Net Change of Overall Opinion.” The data in this chart is broken out globally and regionally.

An analysis of the “frequency” of appearance of each vendor in the Net Change of Overall Opinion league table

The top 30 ranked brands for Net Change of Overall Opinion are shown below for both the global sample of all respondents as well as for all respondents in each of the geographic regions.

Please note that inclusion of any brand in any cut of the data shown the tables in this article is dependent on available sample size. The minimum sample size for inclusion in these charts is 30 respondents per cut of the data. Therefore it is possible that a highly regarded brand was excluded from these findings based on sample size.

In all cases, these results are shown in alphabetical order, NOT in the order in which they were ranked by respondents to the study.

The 2012 BBS Net Change in Overall Opinion League Table:

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A total of 58 broadcast technology vendor brands are included in this table (up from 51 in 2011), illustrating the geographic variation of opinion. Analysis of these results shows that are some clear market leaders on a global basis, while others are strong on a regional basis.

It’s useful to understand how often each brand appears in the 2012 BBS Net Change in Overall Opinion League Table.

This is shown below, along with the equivalent data from the 2011 BBS for comparison.

Frequency of appearance of brands in the 2012 BBS Net Change in Overall Opinion League Table:

9 brands appear four times (compared to 13 brands in 2011), meaning they were ranked in the top 30 globally and in each geographic region

12 brands appear three times (compared to 10 brands in 2011)

11 brands appear two times (compared to 9 brands in 2011)

26 brands appeared one time (compared to 19 brands in 2011). This illustrates a fragmentation of opinion about many brands based on geography

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Brands appearing four times in the 2012 BBS Net Change of Overall Opinion League Table:

Frequency Analysis of the Brands in the in the 2012 BBS Net Change of Overall Opinion League Table:

In order to provide a better understanding of which brands were most highly ranked in each geographic region, the data has been provided in the table below, which shows the global and regional performance for each brand in the top 30 ranking of overall opinion.

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Frequency Analysis of Brands in the 2012 BBS Net Change of Overall Opinion League Table:

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This frequency analysis chart shows that there are some interesting geographic variations in the data. Here’s a closer look at how brands appeared by geography:

Appearing only in the global ranking of the 2012 BBS Net Change of Overall Opinion League Table

Seven brands achieved a top 30 ranking in the 2012 BBS Net Change of Overall Opinion league table, despite not being listed in the top 30 of any of the three geographic regions. This may be a function of sample size. As discussed above, there is a minimum sample size requirement for inclusion in each cut of the data presented in these chart, and the global ranking, by definition, has the largest overall sample.

Appearing only in the Americas region in the 2012 BBS Net Change of Overall Opinion League Table

Aspera, Ensemble, Evertz, Telestream, Wheatstone,

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Please keep the following in mind when reviewing this information: All data these charts are presented in alphabetical order, not in the order brands were ranked by respondents to the 2012 BBS. All data in this article measures the responses of all non-vendor participants in the 2012 BBS, regardless of organization type, organization size, job title, geographic location, or purchasing authority — responses based on individual organization types or geographic locations may be very different from the results shown in this article. There is a minimum sample size requirement for any brand to be included in any cut of the data presented in this article. There were a total of 152 brands covered in the 2012 BBS, for a complete list please click here. Granular analysis of these results is available as part of various paid-for reports based on the 2012 BBS data set. For more information about this report, please contact Devoncroft Partners.

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Devoncroft Partners has published a variety of reports from 2012 BBS data. For more information, please get in touch.